Matrilineal: Hotel
by Em Meredith


TITLE: Hotel  
AUTHOR: Em Meredith  
EMAIL: emily@healthyinterest.net  
SPOILERS: Nothing in particular-- vague spoilers through Season 2.  
SUMMARY: "Exit 75, I'm still alive. I'm still alive." Third in a series (which we may actually name at some point-- feel free to email with suggestions); follows my "Materinstva" and Macha's "La Paternité."  
RATING: PG  
DISCLAIMER: The lyrics in the summary belong to Tori Amos. I don't own the characters from Alias. I borrowed them from JJ Abrams, Touchstone, and ABC. They're used without intent to infringe, blah blah blah.   
DISTRIBUTION: It lives at my site: .   
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Many thanks to Macha, for knowing what I was *trying* to say and helping me to spit it out. Thanks also to kate, Mush, Philateley, and everyone who had such kind words for the first one.  
Hotel  
By Em Meredith  
  
One of the first things Sydney learned about espionage was that "safety in numbers" no longer applied. It's easier for one person to blend into the background, but when you need to *hide,* it's best to split up so as not to draw attention. These last few days have only proven that-- disappearing is particularly difficult when your companion's preferred method of communication involves screaming at the top of her lungs.  
  
Thankfully, though, Jane is not screaming now. She's sleeping quietly on the bed, with pillows banking her on either side to keep her from rolling off-- as if Sydney won't notice the moment she stirs from her slumber.   
  
Sydney slowly sinks into the chair, which she's pushed up against the door and under the knob. It's not going to stop anyone who wants to come in and the angle of the seat is far from comfortable, but it allows her to both hear and feel the door, which should buy her enough time to block the baby and switch off her gun's safety.   
  
She doesn't realize she's falling asleep until she feels the gun starts to slip out of her fingers. She jerks up with a start and scrubs her free hand over her face, willing the fatigue to go away. This hotel isn't extravagant enough to have a coffee maker in the room, so she settles for going into the bathroom and splashing cold water on her face.  
  
Six days ago, she was tired from being up all night with a colicky baby. Tonight she's limp with exhaustion from spending five days racing around the country, trying to drop out of sight.  
  
Sydney knows she can't go on like this for much longer. She hasn't seen a tail since the second day, so she thinks that maybe it's time to make a long-term plan. As if a plan can be long term when you're being chased across the country by would-be assassins -- or worse, kidnappers - sent ostensibly by Sloane.   
  
In an attempt to stave off sleep, she drags out the atlas she bought the last time she stopped to buy diapers and formula and pores over its pages. She decides that small towns are her safest bet, since she'll have to worry less about avoiding surveillance cameras in bank parking lots. She'll blend in less in a small town, but so will the people chasing her. Her nightmares involve city streets and assassins stepping out onto the sidewalk beside her.   
  
Sydney waits until mid-afternoon, when she's able to blend into the crowd at the local Wal-Mart. She's taken to dressing Jane like a little boy, with Bob the Builder overalls replacing her flowered jumpers. She's looking through the infant clothing when she notices a rack of miniature hockey jerseys. Her breath catches, but she holds Jane closer and walks past.   
  
Sydney's never been the type of mother to put headbands or little Velcro bows in her daughter's wispy hair, so the baseball cap she chooses is a new experience for Jane. And judging from her reaction, it's not one she likes. As Sydney strolls through the aisles, getting the office supplies she'll need to create the licenses and certificates for their new identities, Jane keeps pushing the hat off her head. Every time her mother replaces it, Jane gives her a look that is a miniature version of Jack Bristow's icy glare.  
  
They return to the hotel and Sydney runs through the feeding/changing/bathing routine before putting her daughter down for the night.   
  
She's halfway through creating her daughter's new birth certificate when it hits her all at once that she has to change Jane's name. She wasn't originally that attached to the name Jane -- she chose it for safety more than anything -- but now it's who her daughter *is.* It was bad enough that Jane's last name couldn't be Vaughn, but now she can't just change her daughter into a "Lisa." She shouldn't have to. She knows she can't keep Jane safe if their life was a series of reactions, an odd noise in the night followed by another week-long drive in a fourth-hand car to a small town. She wants her daughter to have all of the security and honesty that her own childhood lacked.  
  
She crumples the papers into a ball and flushes them down the toilet.  
  
The next night, at the next hotel, Sydney starts making a list.  
  
The first option on her list is the CIA. There are a number of items in the "pro" column under this entry, but the lone con is enough to make her cross them out. They could protect her, and they probably would, but she doesn't doubt that the agency is ruthless enough to use whatever leverage they can to bring Irina Derevko down. Even if that leverage is barely six months old.  
  
Sydney's second option, then, is Irina Derevko herself. She certainly has the power to keep her daughter and granddaughter safe, but Irina still has ties to Sloane. Given Sydney's suspicions that it was Sloane who ordered the team after her, contacting Irina would surely lead him directly to Jane.  
  
Sydney hasn't slept more than twenty minutes in a stretch for almost a week, and she thinks that may be why she puts Will next on her list. The only entry in his pro column is the thought of how ridiculous he'd be with the baby. She smiles fondly, picturing him trying to feed Jane, and thinks that he'd probably end up covered in strained peas and carrots.  
  
But she doesn't have time to waste on unviable options. She's come down to her last -- and probably best -- one: her father. Not only does he hold a personal grudge against Sloane, but his countermeasures are probably safe enough to keep her contact from being discovered by either Sloane or the CIA. She certainly can't picture her father feeding Jane strained peas (mostly she imagines him staring uncomfortably at the baby), but she can see him dodging into a hail of bullets to save her.   
  
Sydney starts to formulate a plan for contacting her father that will steer clear of any CIA surveillance he's probably under. She doesn't think about Vaughn and how by now he's sure to have found out about Jane. She thinks only of getting to her father so that they can take Sloane down and so Jane can be *Jane* and not Lisa or Anna.   
  
She doesn't wonder if Vaughn will be able to forgive her or what she'll say when she sees him again.   
  
She thinks about hunting Sloane down as she tears her list into tiny pieces. She piles them in the ashtray, puts a match to them, and watches the flames until they die out.  
------------  
  
Feedback joyfully received at emily@healthyinterest.net.  
Please stay tuned for Macha's companion piece, "Spark." 


End file.
